If you hadn't heard, Quest Software acquired NetPro (press release). The whole deal was done rather quickly, and I have to say I was surprised by the whole evolution of events. I figured we'd be acquired by someone at some point, but I didn't see this one coming.

As you can imagine, one of my biggest concerns has been what will happen to DEC (now TEC). Quest has been jealous of DEC for quite a while, and I've had nightmares about Quest turning it into some giant sales and marketing fiasco. But I've been informed by people up and down the organization that they want TEC to continue just as it is. One of the Quest marketing people even said something to the effect of "We don't want anything to do with it; we'll just mess it up. You've got a great thing going and we just want to leave it alone." That's certainly great to hear, and it gives Christine and me a pretty good confort level that TEC will continue to be a great event for the Microsoft IdA community to meet and learn. And in fact that's going to be my primary focus for the next several months.

I've spent a little time with the Quest product teams (product management mostly, along with some R&D guys), and I've been pleasantly surprised both at the quality of the people (they're all really sharp) and of the process of product line integration. Everyone has had an open mind, there haven't been any agendas or significant politics, and everyone is on the same page as far as bringing the best products and features forward to our customers. I really expect to see substantial improvements in the Quest product line as we go forward.

Corporate acquisitions are usually complicated, messy affairs, and often don't net out very well, but this one seems to be off to a pretty good start.